


Through the Looking Glass

by IDreamOnlyOfYou (lauren3210)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-21
Updated: 2012-08-21
Packaged: 2017-11-12 15:20:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/492670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lauren3210/pseuds/IDreamOnlyOfYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny finally figures out what's been happening all around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through the Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is my very first fic for Teen Wolf, and I'm kind of nervous, so please be kind?
> 
> Also, according to my head canon, Sterek are... well, canon, so there's a little of that implied here!

It isn't often that Danny has to make himself stop and think about his choices. His life is actually pretty good, in the way that all simple things are. His Dad has a good job, his mother is an amazing cook, and his younger sister isn't even very irritating. His Dad bought him a nice car when he passed Driver's Ed, and his job at the local coffee shop in town pays enough to keep him in gas and Armani aftershave. Playing goalie for the lacrosse team is fun and would probably help get him into a good college once he graduates, as well as helping keep him in good shape. He's even allowed unsupervised access to computers and the internet these days since he managed to convince his parents that his promise to never do anything stupid again was sincere. Okay yeah, so his boyfriend may have broken up with him after seeing him dance with Scott at the school formal, but if Danny was totally honest with himself he had been on the verge of breaking up with the guy anyway; his sexual proclivities were a little too kinky for Danny's taste. At least it meant that he could touch as well as look on his nights out at _Jungle_. So yeah, his life is actually pretty good.

Which is why he finds it odd that he's recently been paying so much attention to Scott and Stiles recently.

They're not his friends, not really. It's not that Danny doesn't like them, it's more that they just move in different circles, even though they're all on the lacrosse team together. He just doesn't spend that much time thinking about them, at least not usually, not before. Scott is one of those kids who drifts through high school, not making any waves, but not leaving any kind of impression either. Stiles definitely makes waves, and the impressions he'll leave on his teachers will probably be enough to scar them for life. Stiles is awkward, all flailing limbs and running mouth, and Danny thinks he heard that the kid has ADHD, which probably accounts for some of it. Although Danny's cousin has ADHD too, and he's not anywhere near as annoying as Stiles, so Danny assumes some of it must just be Stiles' personality.

Danny doesn't notice much at first. He thinks about asking Scott for the number of his lacrosse trainer, because the kid shoots from being worse than terrible to as good as Jackson over the summer holidays, and if the trainer can do that to Scott, then Danny would completely dominate the sport at college. Although really, he's not sure he could ever slam someone into the ground as hard as Scott did to him, even if he trained every hour of the day so in the end he decides not to bother.

He finds it a bit strange to be sitting next to Stiles in the cafeteria, but he guesses it's to be expected when Scott starts dating the new girl Allison, who Lydia and Jackson have taken under their wing. He does his best to ignore the kid, but there's just something about Stiles that gets under people's skin, so he's a little bit meaner than he would be usually.

It's only when Jackson starts acting strange that Danny really starts paying attention to what's going on around him. At first he thinks Jackson is just jealous, because Coach Finstock demoted him from captain to co-captain of the team, making him share the title with Scott. But then the thing happened at the video store, and although Jackson refused to talk about it, Danny knew that something really weird had to have happened.

Then the janitor goes missing and the school is wrecked, and Jackson is acting even weirder. His best friend swears blind that he hadn't been anywhere near the school that night, but Danny doesn't quite believe him, although he doesn't push it. A lot of people don't really understand his friendship with Jackson, and Danny gets why. Jackson is a jerk to pretty much everyone he comes into contact with, Danny included, but they don't see what Danny sees. Danny is the only one to have seen how broken Jackson was when he found out he'd been adopted; who understands that his jerk behaviour is just his way of covering up the fact that Jackson is just so damn terrified that someone won't find him worthy, and how he strives for perfection in everything just so that he doesn't give anyone the chance to reject him. So Danny puts up with his moods and his jerkiness and just hopes that some of his own easy-going attitude rubs off on his friend.

It isn't until he has to go over to Stiles' house to work on a project that he actually starts paying attention to the kid. He stands in his room awkwardly, torn between being really quite angry that Stiles looked up his record and burning curiosity at the extremely hot guy sitting in the corner who is currently staring at Stiles like he's not sure if he wants to kiss him or kill him. Which yeah, Danny can relate, although he swings more towards the _kill_ side of things usually because Stiles can never seem to keep his absurdly pretty mouth shut long enough for Danny to even think about kissing him. Danny watches as the guy that's so hot he should have a warning label on him somewhere (and Danny's actually pretty close to going over to see if he can find one somewhere) strips off his shirt while Stiles keeps his eyes averted and Danny suddenly remembers Stiles asking him if he was attractive to gay guys and he thinks he might understand what's going on here. Because there is no way that the guy is Stiles' cousin, but hey, Danny has had a few 'Miguels' in his time, so he's not going to judge. But then things get weird again as Stiles starts asking his opinion of 'Miguel' and Danny isn't sure if he's gloating about the fact that he's found himself an insanely hot boyfriend or if he's actually asking Danny if the guy is as hot as Stiles obviously thinks he is. So Danny just does what Stiles asks without asking why he needs to trace a text to Scott from Scott's Mom because he really doesn't think he could handle the answer, and then he skedaddles, leaving before the very hot and angry sex Stiles is about to have if Danny has interpreted the way 'Miguel' has been glowering at the boy right starts right there in front of him.

Soon after that very weird afternoon Jackson breaks up with Lydia and starts getting closer to Allison despite the fact that she is very obviously head over heels in love with Scott and Danny starts to really wonder just what Jackson's game is. But then the dance happens, and while Danny is outside trying to convince Greg that there really is nothing going on between him and Scott, he notices Jackson walking out of the woods with Allison's Dad, who seems to be holding a _freaking assault rifle_. Danny hurries through his conversation with Greg and almost doesn't hear himself being dumped so he can go find Jackson and find out what's really going on. 

But then Lydia is found attacked on the lacrosse field and Danny forgets about what he saw and just wants to be there for his friend. He goes to the hospital to see Lydia and to make sure Jackson is okay and he gets there just in time to see Allison's Dad hustling Jackson and Stiles into a room. He stands around outside for a while, wondering just what the hell is going on, but he has to move away when a couple of the Sheriff's deputies walk past and by the time he comes back the room is empty and neither Jackson nor Stiles are anywhere to be found.

For a while after the dance, things seem to go back to normal, and Danny starts thinking that maybe he just overreacted a little bit. Okay yeah, Lydia wakes up from her coma and goes for a stroll through the woods naked for a couple of days, but once she gets back to school she seems okay, so Danny figures maybe it was some kind of PTSD or something and doesn't think too much about it. And okay yeah, Jackson seemed to have that weird nosebleed that looked more like black slime than actual blood, but he goes back to being his usual jerk-self, so Danny decides that maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him because the sun was shining directly on his face and he was stressed about the test. 

He doesn't even think too much about the weird request of watching Jackson sleep on a recording because to be honest, Jackson has asked weirder things of his friend before. He's grateful when Matt finds him in the library and offers to help him watch the tape, and he forgets about asking why he'd want to help when Matt realises that the tape has been digitally altered because he's too busy wondering what the hell Jackson could have been up to for those two hours that were deleted. 

It's when he's in _Jungle_ one night that he starts to realise that whenever stuff starts getting really weird around him Scott and Stiles seem to be at the centre of it. One moment he's dancing with a cute guy and really wishing he could just forget about his ex and move on, and the next he's watching warily as Stiles is surrounded by a group of drag queens. He thinks about going over to help the guy out (because he knows from experience just how hands-y those girls can get) but before he can make a decision one way or the other, people start screaming and dropping to the floor around him. He doesn't even notice that he's on the ground at first, he's too busy with the fact that his neck is stinging like a bitch and trying to work out why he can't lift his hands to feel what happened. Then he starts breathing heavily as he realises that not only is he on the floor but he's also paralysed from the neck down. But the panic only really sets in when he sees something slither along the ground that looks either like a snake or the tail of a really big lizard and he thinks _oh God I'm going to die, and I will never know what the hell is happening with all my friends_. The smoke is still pouring out of the pipes in the ceiling making it hard for Danny to see anything much as he glances around frantically to see if there's anyone close by that can help him. He thinks he vaguely hears Scott yell _“Don't!”_ and he turns his head in the direction of the voice. His heart stutters in his chest as he sees two pinpricks of red blaze through the smoke before he remembers that it's probably just the lasers and then he just lays there while the rest of the clubbers try to fight their way out of the exit. From his extremely poor vantage point of the floor he watches Scott shove his way through easily and wonders for the millionth time how the boy got so strong so fast before noticing that Stiles has been knocked to his hands and knees in the stampede and Danny feels vaguely frustrated that he can't get up to help him. So he just lies there and watches as a strong hand clamps down on Stiles' arm and hauls him to his feet, pulling him through the crowd as 'Miguel' pushes his way through just as easily as Scott did with Stiles trailing behind in his powerful wake.

A few months before he would have been really confused by Scott coming to talk to him outside the club to see if he's okay, but he's realised by now that Scott and Stiles seem to be at the heart of most of the weird shit that's been happening recently, so he shrugs it off in order to ask the most important question which was _did the same thing happen to his ex?_ and he spends the journey to the hospital feeling a kind of grim satisfaction. He's also not surprised that Scott is at the hospital later, once the supposed drug was out of his system, although he is a bit surprised that he's asking him so many questions about Jackson. When he accidentally lets slip that he's been working on recovering the lost footage from Jackson's tape, he tries to be a loyal friend and not give away any more details. But he's tired and his neck aches and he has a feeling that the so-called drug that had paralysed him and made him see man-sized lizards and wolf-men with glowing red eyes wasn't actually a drug at all, and he thinks that just maybe telling Scott would be the right thing to do. So when Scott gives him an easy out by offering to get his fake id back for him, he tells him the whole story about Jackson's recent foray into self-voyeurism.

Danny does feel a bit bad about spilling his best friend's secrets and he has every intention of owning up and apologising at school the next day, except Jackson doesn't show up, not even for lacrosse practice, which is really not like Jackson. Scott and Stiles are also absent for most of the day but Danny doesn't really think about them too much because Lydia is suddenly writing HELP ME backwards on the chalkboard instead of completing her math problem and running everyone else's time into the ground as she usually does. Then the next day Jackson is back and there's a rumour going around that Scott and Stiles had kidnapped him as some sort of badly thought out joke and his Dad has now put a restraining order against them both. Danny tries talking to Jackson about what really happened (because he thinks he knows Scott and Stiles well enough by now to know that practical jokes against the most popular guy in school isn't really their idea of a wild time) but Jackson just shuts him down and refuses to talk about it. Danny isn't really the kind of guy to push things and he's learned from experience that that almost never works with Jackson anyway but yeah, this time Danny isn't too quick to just brush things under the rug and forget about them.

He starts paying attention in the changing rooms before and after practice and he notices that the shy kid who was arrested on the field a few days ago has seemed to come out of his shell a bit recently, much like Scott did a few months back, and that Isaac has suddenly started hanging around with Erica and Boyd, both of whom also seem to have undergone some kind of transformation recently. He notices that more often than not, 'Miguel' watches their lacrosse practice from the edge of the trees (when he's not giving lifts to Erica while Stiles looks on with undisguised jealousy) and he notices that Matt watches Allison with the same kind of intensity that 'Miguel' watches Stiles. And then one day he's walking home from a late practice and a sheet of paper gets stuck around his leg. He picks it off him and is just about to throw it away when he realises that it's one of those police posters that were up all over town from before Allison's aunt was discovered to be the murderer. He takes a closer look at the artist's sketch and his eyes widen as he realises that the person depicted is none other than Stiles' 'cousin' Miguel, and Danny wonders what the hell the Sheriff's kid thinks he is doing by getting involved with someone like Derek Hale.

Danny ponders this information for a few days and wonders if he should speak to Stiles about it. It's obvious to everyone who looks at him that the kid has had about as much sexual experience as a teaspoon and Danny can't help but feel like he should be looking out for the boy a bit and he's really not sure that Derek Hale is a great first time for anyone; at the very least, he could just ruin Stiles from ever finding anything as good ever again.

But before he can decide to step in, things get weird all over again and Danny just doesn't know what to make of it all. Matt holds the Sheriff's department at gunpoint before drowning in the lake and even though everyone claims they don't know any more than he does, he has the sneaking suspicion that they're all lying to him.

And then weird turns into tragic a week later. One moment Danny's standing in goal watching with shocked pride as Stiles scores goal after goal, and the next moment all the lights go out and everybody freaks out. And then suddenly the lights come back on and Jackson, his best friend, is lying on the floor and Scott's Mom is lying over him trying to find a pulse while the Sheriff is screaming for his son. Danny hurries to the lockers to strip out of his uniform and gets back to the parking lot just in time to see Mrs McCall getting into an ambulance as a body bag is loaded into the back. Without even thinking about it, Danny runs to his car and follows the ambulance to the hospital.

By the time he's found a parking space the ambulance has already unloaded and he's told very firmly by a nurse that he's not allowed in to see the body until Jackson's parents have been notified. He hangs around near the morgue, wanting to be there for Mr and Mrs Whittemore when they arrived. Instead, he notices Mrs McCall acting really suspicious, looking around her before slipping into the morgue, which is weird since she works here and so should be able to go anywhere unquestioned. Danny waits a little longer and is rewarded by seeing Scott and Isaac turn up and slip into the morgue after Scott's Mom. He leans in closer to the door and although he can't work out what they're saying he knows that something weird is happening again.

He goes out to his car and just sits for a while, trying to work out just what the hell is going on around him and trying to narrow down when it all started. He's just about to start the car and drive home so he can go to sleep and hope that this whole night has just been a very strange and terrible dream when the back door suddenly slams open and Scott peeks out. Danny hunkers himself down in the car and watches as Scott peers around the parking lot before diving back behind the door. He walks out backwards with Isaac following him close behind, and Danny's jaw drops as he sees that between them they're carrying an obviously occupied body bag _Jesus Christ_. He winces as Scott drops his end of the bag because he just _knows_ that Jackson is in there and then has a momentary freak out as a car pulls up and Mr I-carry-guns-everywhere Argent jumps out. Danny is too far away to hear what anyone is saying, so he just watches as Scott and Mr Argent stare uncomfortably at each other, before picking up the body bag and throwing it in the back of the man's car. Danny's not really the sort of guy to poke his nose in where it isn't wanted, but his best friend is in the back of that car. Without giving himself too much time to think about it, he shoves the key into the ignition and follows the black SUV to the warehouse district.

Danny doesn't follow them all the way in, choosing instead to park a little further back and creep up behind them unnoticed. He watches from behind a stack of wooden crates as they all get out of the car, and Isaac's voice reaches him across the still night air, “I think he's stopped moving.”

 _What the actual fuck?_ Danny is spared having too much time to think about this because the sound of running floats towards him and he looks up just in time to see Derek Hale doing some truly amazing acrobatics down the length of the warehouses. Scott and Isaac pull the body bag out of the car and Danny winces in case Scott manages to drop his end again and they all walk into one of the warehouses. Before Danny can move closer, another car draws up and the new principal steps out along with Allison and they both walk in and join the group already inside. Danny hesitates for a second before slipping over to the warehouse in question. He finds an old oil drum near a window and he balances himself carefully on top of it, using his sleeve to wipe the glass before peering down on the scene before him.

He almost shouts out loud when he sees Derek lean down over a still Jackson with his hand held out _and fucking hell, are those claws?_ and he claps a hand over his mouth as Jackson suddenly sits up, sinking his own fingers into Derek's stomach. Then Jackson throws the man clear across the room and all hell breaks loose so quickly that he can't keep up with it all. He sees Allison with a fucking crossbow and her Dad shooting his very large handgun at Jackson who seems to have turned into a _giant fucking lizard_. Isaac and Scott have suddenly grown facial hair and their eyes are glowing yellow, and then Derek manages to get up from where Jackson threw him and he's looking pretty much the same except his eyes are glowing red, and Danny thinks that he's either having the weirdest dream ever or he's missed out of a lot of strange shit that has happened over the last few months.

A gust of wind blows past his legs and Danny almost falls off his perch on the oil drum as Stiles' Jeep whips past him and slams itself through the doors, sending Jackson the freaking lizard flying. Danny watches as both Stiles and Lydia jump out of the car and run for their lives, and he nearly shouts out a warning to Lydia as she stops and faces Jackson head on, holding something up in her hand. And just when Danny thinks the night can't get any weirder or more terrifying than watching Principal Argent spew black goo out of his mouth, Jackson turns back into Jackson and Derek swoops in close and puts his claws through Jackson's stomach, while another guy Danny hadn't even known was there does the same to his back. Lydia is crying and she turns away, but Danny can't tear his eyes away from his best friend, so he is the first person to see him move. A few tears escape as Danny watches Jackson's fingers skitter across the cement floor, the nails elongating and becoming claws, and his legs wobble slightly as Jackson gets up from the floor and straight up _fucking roars_.

Danny thinks he's probably seen enough for one night, so he gets down off the drum with shaky legs and staggers back to his car, throwing himself inside and trying to breathe through his panic. As the tightness in his chest slowly subsides Danny tries to absorb everything he's witnessed recently. From what he could see, nearly all of his friends have some kind of freaky supernatural powers, from Lydia with her ability to calm down lizard people to Allison and her crossbow down to the hairy trio. And he guesses that both Boyd and Erica have something to do with it too. Everyone that is, except Stiles. And himself.

Danny has never been the kind of guy to look at his choices and wonder what he's doing with his life, because his life is actually pretty damn good. But now he thinks that maybe instead of settling for good, he should try to shoot for something higher. Like maybe worthwhile.


End file.
